This sequence of four courses will propose a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of Chinese cultural history conceived of as a succession of modes of rationality (philosophical, bureaucratic, and economic). The focus will be on the moments of paradigm shift from one mode of rationality to another. For each of these moments, cultural facts and artifacts—thought, literature, ritual—will be examined in relationship to changing social, political, and economic systems.
The first two courses will cover the periods of the Warring States (481-256 BCE) and the Period of Division (220-589 CE), with a brief excursion into the Han (206 BCE-220 CE). The Warring States laid the social and cultural foundations for the emergence of the imperial mode of rationality; the Period of Division saw the Buddhist “conquest” of China and the emergence of a rationality defined by the opposition of the Three Teachings to shamanism, that is, of a clear contrast between elite and popular culture.
The third and fourth courses will focus on the emergence of modern China in the Song-Yuan (960-1368) and of today’s China 1850 to the present. We will see how the modern attack on religion, redefined as "superstition", led not only to religious reform movements but also to a society in which science and the nation became the primary value systems promoted by the state.
The courses are listed below:
A Critical Cultural History of China - Early China I: Intellectual Change in the Warring States and Han (481 BCE-220 CE)
A Critical Cultural History of China - Early China II: Religious Transformation in the Period of Division (220-589 CE)
A Critical Cultural History of China - Modern China I: Religion and Thought in the Song, Jin, and Yuan (960-1368)
A Critical Cultural History of China - Modern China II: Structuring Values (1850-2015)

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RS

Challenging course but it was very satisfying to be able to glimpse the complexity of religious thought in China during the Song, Jin, and Yuan. Thanks you, Professor..on to Part 4!

PB

Mar 26, 2020

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Thoroughly enjoyed the course! This course has introduced me to so many new reading materials. Thank you.

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Module 18 Dunhuang

This module describes the emergence of a culture of Buddhist cave worship during the Period of Division. You can learn how cave murals and statues, together with texts for the water-land ritual, made the Pure Land something very concrete and real for Chinese Buddhists.

講師

Prof. John Lagerwey

字幕

So we've talked a great deal about the importance of Tiantai ritual as being something done for the lay persons, that incorporated the people into Buddhist practice. It was not just these Buddhist monks but these Buddhist monks who were doing these rituals also for the people, okay? And this, as you may recall, is called the <i>shuiluzhai</i> 水陸齋 or the water-land ritual. So what we're going to be doing now is taking a look at a whole series of worship sites, going back as early as the 4th century, in Gansu 甘肅 province, which is along the Silk Road, all the way out to the most famous site of all of the caves of Dunhuang 敦煌. But we're going to first take a look at a whole series of caves. There are not just the caves of Dunhuang. There, in fact, this is a whole cave culture —<i>shiku</i> 石窟 they're called in Chinese— a whole cave culture that developed in this Period of Division, that is to say from the fall of the Han in 220 to the rise of the Sui and then the Tang at the end of the 6th century. A whole period when in fact North China, especially from 313 on, was in fact under the control of very short lived non-Chinese dynasties, and this is when Buddhism comes in in a really massive fashion into China. And so we're going to be looking at this cave culture with its statues, with its images. And then we're going to step out of these caves and take a look at the rituals that were done, not necessarily in those caves but the rituals that were done in the Song dynasty, because we're talking about the Song dynasty and there we're going to look exactly at the <i>shuiluzhai</i> ritual manuals, some of the earliest ones that we have, to see how in fact, through the ritual, concepts like <i>jingtu</i> 淨土, which may have been very abstract, become very very concrete, something that is experienced in the ritual, on the ritual arena itself. So we'll look at a ritual manual and then at last we'll come back to one of the most beautiful images of <i>jingtu</i>, of the Pure Land, of the Paradise of the West, that in fact dates to the 8th century. So what we can see here is that there's this long history, this long history that leads up gradually to the creation of these <i>shuiluzhai</i> rituals that we have talked about as so important to the story of Buddhism in the Song dynasty. So we'll begin with some of these pictures and here you can see we're approaching Dunhuang and you can see this is what the caves looked like before they were—what shall I say?—approached in a perspective of preservation, okay? So: here you see what they looked like probably to the people who saw them, discovered them, as it were, at the beginning of the 20th century. And then of course all the famous story of all of the Dunhuang manuscripts that were taken to Paris, that were taken to London and so on, okay? So: this is what they looked like and this is the approach to Dunhuang, and here we have the actual Dunhuang caves, the famous Mogaoku 莫高窟 that is where the manuscripts were found in fact in a Daoist temple which is just off to the right here . And then each of these very very large number of caves, over 400, I forget the exact number, all of them numbered, and you can see that they had put a facade on it, which was done in the 1950s. It's not very pretty, but it preserves the caves. So one temple, okay? Now we're going to just jump out of Dunhuang. We'll come back to it in a moment to see that beautiful image inside of one of the caves of the <i>jingtu</i>, of the Paradise of the West. But to show—when we talk about the Buddhist "conquest" of China, well, what we're talking about is that it seeps into every nook and cranny of Chinese society, culture, and imagination. And so here we are in a geological site called <i>danxia dimao</i> 丹霞地貌, sort of like the Grand Canyon, highly erosive stones with many many minerals that give it extraordinary colors. It has become a very famous site to visit now in Gansu province. And, well, what do we see? We see all kinds of different things but one of the things that we see, or that the Chinese saw or some Chinese saw, gave this particular stone formation a name, okay? What it is is "monks worshipping the Buddha." So, this is how—now let's go back and look at the image: you see these little mounds in front of this long hill—low hill, you might say. So how is this "monks worshipping the Buddha"? Well, you have to know that there are not only standing images of the Buddha, there are not only seated images of the Buddha, there are lying images of the Buddha. They're called <i>wofo</i> 卧佛, the sleeping Buddha. But of course, in fact, it's actually the Buddha who has entered into nirvana, okay? And so this is what the monks are worshiping here in the imagination of the people who gave that name to this particular geological formation. So "the monks worshiping the Buddha." Now we're going to go down to another very famous site called Binglingsi 炳靈寺, which is on the Huanghe 黃河, on the Yellow River, in eastern Gansu province. Dunhuang is way out in the west of Gansu province. Of course, now, that Silk Road goes on all the way— did go all the way into what is now Central Asia—Xinjiang 新疆 and then Central Asia, okay? So: Binglingsi, again, a very large number of caves. And here you can actually take pictures inside the caves. They're less famous and less guarded, you might say. So you can see how each of these caves was in fact a small temple, was a place of worship. Sometimes it was carved out by emperors. Sometimes it was carved out by local wealthy families, lay persons contributing, and that's why you get this multiplication of caves in a single site but also of caves all over Gansu province and not only Gansu province. So you might say the culture of <i>shiku</i> [caves] is the story of Buddhism's entry into China from the second century on and all the way to the famous caves of Yungang 雲岡 and Longmen 龍門 near Luoyang 洛陽, Yungang near Taiyuan 太原. Okay, so these are all very early caves dated to the Beiwei, the Northern Wei, to the Beizhou, the Northern Zhou. In other words, from that whole period of—the formative period—of Chinese Buddhism, as I say, it was still a very largely foreign religion that was coming in under the aegis of foreign dynasties, non-Chinese dynasties, who controlled all of North China from around the beginning of the 4th century on, 313, as I recall, the fall of the Xijin, the Western Jin, and then the Chinese that we now call the <i>hanren</i> 漢人—they're not called <i>hanren</i> then— but they, so they moved south and so we have the Eastern Jin, and that's where the Chinese themselves—Chinese regimes—are, and the northern regimes are all of non-Chinese origin. So this is what we're talking about, is the Buddhism of these foreign dynasties who are behind this vast surge in the production of worship sites, these <i>shiku</i>, these stone caves.